Each Christmas, we spend a lot of time reviewing the year just gone. We scrutinise the numbers in our businesses; sales figures, production figures, financial figures and so on……we look at the numbers that Google Analytics throws up and try to decipher what the heck it all means.

But what about the words? Do we spend as much time worrying about them as we do with figures? Probably not.

Some people do worry about the words because they don’t feel confident in their own writing abilities. There’s nothing wrong with that. We’re all different.

Many of us, however, pay lip service to the quality of the words that we write and subsequently publish. We’re so pressurised by a lack of time, the first thing that goes out the window, is the checking process. Once you’ve pressed the ‘send’ button, it’s gone; mistakes and all. You’ve lost control of it and depending on where you’ve sent it you may not even know who’s going to read it.

For many businesses there is an expectation from their readers for the words that they publish to be correct, e.g. those of you in the legal, financial, education, learning & development sectors are expected to ensure that your written material is accurate, professional-looking and above all free from errors.

The first thing that will be damaged as a result of your errors is your hard-earned reputation.

So why don’t we focus on the words we write so much nowadays? Do they not matter? I think they’re equally as important, if not more important than the figures.

‘But you’re a proofreader, you’re bound to say that’, I hear you say. So what?

Just think about HOW you promote your business.

You write words for your website

You write words on a flyer or a brochure

You write words in a newsletter

You write words in an advertisement

You write words in a blog post and on social media

I could go on and list all the other things you do that involve writing words….

If you think about it you probably write a lot more words than you do numbers so what better reason to give them the TLC they deserve this Christmas.

A really good way of giving your words some valued TLC is to make sure they are checked properly, so here are 5 top tips that you can use to proofread your own writing:

Print off what you’ve written and put it to one side. Come back to it after a couple of hours. Your eyes and brain will have done something else by then and will be fresh to have another look.

Get somebody else to read it – if they’ve got the time.

Read it out loud.

Read it backwards. Doing that you will focus on every word and check that it’s spelt correctly.

If you don’t trust your own ability or knowledge of the English language sufficiently to do it yourself – call in a trained expert.

Working with a proofreader on a regular basis will save you time and money. You’ll be able to use that time to do something more profitable for your business.

By working together, you can be confident that your writing will be conveying the right message and that your customers will have confidence in you and your business.

If you think you need some help to give your words some TLC, give me a call…

What is it about grammar that gets people so worked up? It’s a bit like Marmite. You either love it or you loathe it. Me? I love it. That’s why I’m a proofreader, I suppose.

I think it all depends on what and how we were taught at school (or not as the case may be). Many people tell me that they were hopeless at English at school and that belief has stuck with them through into their adult life and, in some instances, it’s having a detrimental effect on their business. There are no hard and fast rules so I’m going to be writing series of blogs over the coming weeks that, hopefully, will get you to love grammar too.

We use grammar everyday whether we realise it or not in spoken as well as written language. There are, however, differences between what comes out of our mouths and what we write down on paper or on screen. From time to time though we need to think about certain things more than others and that’s when the uncertainty and the fear set in. Every grammatical problem has a solution and often it’s important that it should just be appropriate more than right.

I’m an avid reader and I’m convinced that the more we read, the more we get to understand grammar and how different writers choose to use it.

Rules that aren’t rules

Never use a conjunction at the beginning of a sentence. Why not? Many writers do this to emphasise something.

What’s a conjunction I hear you say? A conjunction is a word such as: as, and, because, but, for, if, of and when – they’re used to connect words, phrases, clauses and sentences.

Never split infinitives. Why not?

What does this mean? One of the most famous examples of a split infinitive is the Star Trek quote: “to boldly go where no man has been before.” The adverb ‘boldly’ is splitting the infinitive of the verb ‘to go’. There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘to go boldly…’.

‘Who are we doing this for?’ – this reflects the way many people speak

‘For whom are we doing this?’ – this is more formal and impersonal.

I was always taught never to start a sentence with ‘however’ or ‘therefore’. There’s nothing wrong with doing that these days but it’s a principle that I still uphold.

On the subject of sentences, here are some quick tips you can use to make sure your sentences are right:

A sentence should start with a capital letter and end with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark;

A sentence will usually contain a verb and a subject;

There’s no minimum or maximum length for a sentence, although if it’s long, use some punctuation to make it easier to read.

The main parts of speech in English are: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be looking at each of these and hopefully dispel any myths or uncertainties you may have.

Part 2 is all about Nouns, so if you want to find out more and have a go at the quick quiz to test your knowledge, click here

In the meantime, contact me if you would like to know more about how I could help you to overcome any fears or lack of confidence you may have about your writing.

As a small business owner you are responsible for all aspects of your business. That means, as well as ‘doing the work’, you’re responsible for marketing to generate new business, finance, personnel (if you employ people), legal things…the list goes on. On any one day you could be wearing all sorts of different hats.

Where do you find the time to do all this? Do you have enough hours in the day?

One solution, of course, is to outsource some of these activities to people who may know more about these things than you do. This will mean that some of your precious time is freed up so you can focus on things that are important to you. Otherwise, if you try and do everything yourself, things are going to go by the way-side because you simply don’t have the time to do it.

One of the key things I see going by the way-side is the checking of any writing before it’s published. By ‘published’, I mean either sending it to a client by mail or email, putting it up on a website as content or being sent out into the ether by way of social/digital media.

A lot of published material that I read contains errors and this can have an immediate negative impact on your intended readers, as well as unintended ones. Once they see an error, then you’ve lost them as their brains are now focussed on finding another error instead of being focussed on your message.

Because we’re so busy, often wearing many different hats at the same time, and because we now live in such a fast-moving world, we’re keen to push the ‘publish NOW’ button and consequently much of it is going unchecked, simply because we don’t allow enough time in our busy schedules to get it checked properly.

Cutting corners to save time can lead to problems especially if the time being saved would have been used to check what we are writing before we publish it.

What are the potential consequences of publishing content that contains errors?

Potential loss of business You may not be aware that the reader who’s just spotted a mistake on your website, for example, may have been about to contact you to discuss some potential new business. That mistake may have put them off making the call.

Potential damaged reputation You will have spent a lot of time and effort building up your business reputation and publishing content that contains errors is the quickest way to damage that hard-earned reputation. Can you afford to let that happen?

Bad news travels fast People are very quick to broadcast bad news. I see many ‘tweets’ showing images of spelling errors that make me cringe at times. That could be your business that some unscrupulous reader is broadcasting across the social media ether. Can you afford to let that happen?

All that may be required to help you to combat these issues is a simple process that you can implement in your business and will give you a structure to your writing and ultimately build your own confidence levels.

This process is the subject of my book – Confident Business Writing

Visit the website – www.confidentbusinesswriting.co.uk and take a tour though my book. Hopefully by the end of the tour you will be motivated to get your own copy and start implementing the process in your business. Let me know and I’d be delighted to help you.

If you’re reading someone else’s writing, a mistake is much more likely to jump off the page. Your brain’s already looking for the next mistake. You’ve forgotten about what you’re reading.

What do you do next?

If you’re online, do you click away from that website and go elsewhere?

If you read on, are you focussing on the meaning of what you’re reading or are you focussed on finding the next mistake?

Do you think about the source of the writing and would you expect that the quality of the writing ought to be better?

If you know the author, how does that make you feel? Will you contact them and point out the mistakes. How embarrassing is that for both you and the author?

All of the above are entirely acceptable behaviours.

How would you feel if that was your writing and people were doing that as a result of having seen one of your mistakes?

If you react that way then they’re going to do it too.

What does that mean for you?

You could have lost some valuable business because of your mistakes. Your hard-earned reputation is at stake here. How costly could a damaged reputation be all because of a silly mistake which, if you’d spent a few minutes checking what you’d written, could easily have been averted?

If you haven’t got time, then let me do it for you. It doesn’t take long, it’s affordable but it could be very costly to you and your business if you don’t do it. A damaged reputation takes a long time to recover.

Do words matter? We spend a lot of time worrying about the numbers in our businesses; sales figures, production figures, financial figures and so on……

But what about the words? Do we spend as much time worrying about them as we do with figures? Probably not.

Some people do worry about the words because they don’t feel confident in their own writing abilities. There’s nothing wrong with that. We’re all different.

Many of us, however, pay lip service to the quality of the words that we write and subsequently publish. We’re so pressurised by a lack of time, the first thing that goes out the window, is the checking process. Once you’ve pressed the ‘send’ button, it’s gone, mistakes and all. You’ve lost control of it and depending on where you’ve sent it you may not even know who’s going to read it.

Do you remember the days when we would write out a cheque to pay our bills? Didn’t we have to make sure that the words and the figures were the same? I know when I was working in a bank that a cheque could bounce if the words and figures were different. How embarrassing was that? We were much more careful back in the day…

For many businesses there is an expectation from their readers for the words that are published to be correct, e.g. those of you in the legal, financial, education/learning & development sectors are expected to ensure that your written material is accurate, professional-looking and above all free from errors.

So why don’t we focus on the words we write so much nowadays? Do they not matter? I think they’re equally as important, if not more important than the figures.

‘But you’re a proofreader, you’re bound to say that’, I hear you say. So what?

How do you promote your business?

You write words for your website

You write words on a flyer or a brochure

You write words in a newsletter

You write words in an advertisement

You write words in a blog post and on social media

I could go on….

You write a lot more words than you think and, therefore, they need to be right.

Are you aware that if you’re reading someone else’s writing and you spot a mistake your brain will automatically flip into a different mode? It focuses on looking for the next mistake and not on what the words are saying. To the writer, you’ve just lost the reader’s attention. They’re no longer focussed on your message. How do you react when you see a mistake? Read my article here.

What if that was a really important message? You’ve just blown it – all because of a silly mistake. That’ll keep on happening if you keep on publishing written material that contains mistakes or that hasn’t been checked properly.

So words really do matter, don’t they? Almost as much as the figures, if not more.

So let’s look after our words, treat them with the respect they deserve and they will then pay you back because someone reading error-free content is much more likely to do business with you because they’ve got your message.

I can help you to do just that – give your words the TLC they deserve.

These are the 5 most common mistakes I come across when helping my clients to be more confident in their writing:

You / Your / You’re
So many times I see the word ‘you’ when it should be ‘your’. When typing away it’s easy miss off the ‘r’. MS Word won’t put a red squiggly line under it because it’s spelt correctly.
‘You’re’ is short for ‘you are’.
A spellchecker won’t pick this up for you because they are all spelt correctly.

There / Their / They’re
They all sound the same but they are all different. ‘Their’ means ‘belonging to them’. ‘There’ means ‘in, at or to that place’. ‘They’re’ is short for ‘they are’.

The absence or misuse of the apostrophe
Why does this little punctuation mark cause us so many problems? Read my blog “When to use an apostrophe” for an explanation.

Words that sound the same but have different meanings.
The English language is full of such words and it’s no wonder we get confused as to which is the right one. Read my blog “Writer’s nightmare – which one is right?” for 20 of the most common examples.

Words with missing letters
There are many examples of words that contain double letters and it’s easy to get confused as to what is the correct spelling, e.g.
Acommodation or Accomodation (correct spelling Accommodation)
Embarass or Embarras (correct spelling Embarrass)
Comittee or Commitee (correct spelling Committee)

If you spell these incorrectly, MS Word should put a red squiggly line underneath and, should you have it switched on, your Auto-Correct function should do its job. You’d be surprised how many of these I see, though.

Working with a proofreader will help you to eliminate these mistakes. Not only will you become aware of mistakes you’re making but you will also learn from having them highlighted and as a result you will become more confident in your own ability when writing in your business.

5 Business Benefits of working with a proofreader on a regular basis

You’re much more likely to secure new business from a customer who has read your error-free content.

Error-free content will create a GREAT impression and allow your reader to focus on your message.

You’ll have more time to do the things that really matter to you.

You’ll have less worry and more peace of mind when you know that your writing is being checked by a ‘trained’ pair of eyes.

Your confidence levels will grow as you learn how to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

If you recognise yourself here, contact me for a FREE initial conversation.

You’re much more likely to secure new business from a customer who has read your error-free content.
This will help you to create a GREAT first impression with prospective customers and enhance your reputation.

By eliminating errors you’ll feel more confident when writing.
I’ll help you to understand how to eliminate your errors so you can relax and focus your attention on things that really matter to you.

To create more time for you to run your business.
Do you want to spend more time running your business? Do you find that reading and re-reading your own work is a chore? Your eyes and brain are too close to the work to spot mistakes. Let me take that worry away from you.

To provide “An Independent Pair of Eyes” to review your writing.
Let me cast my trained eye over your work. I’m more likely to spot errors more quickly than you are as the author of the content.

To help you save money.
Do you know the cost of your time spent reading and re-reading your own work? It’s a lot more than you might think.

To save you from embarrassment.
There’s nothing more embarrassing than one of your customers noticing an error and then publicising it. I can help you to ‘get it RIGHT first time’.

To add value to your team.
I can be a virtual member of your team helping to make sure that your written content looks professional and is error-free, BEFORE in goes to print or to publication.

To reduce your waste paper volumes.
As you won’t have to re-print materials that originally contained errors, you can feel a whole lot better as you’re doing something towards reducing waste.

To remove your worries especially if you are dyslexic or if English is not your first language.

To provide a professional alternative to a spellchecker.
A spellchecker will not pick up words that have been spelt correctly but typed incorrectly.

Are you aware that documents you are sending out by post or by email attachment may contain errors that might damage your hard-earned reputation?

The reason I ask is because I recently received an email from the Sales Director of a local company in which was attached a sales brochure. On reading this brochure I spotted 12 mistakes.

When I told him, he was devastated as he had no idea that he was sending out literature that contained mistakes.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that will spot these mistakes. Whilst the product being promoted wasn’t appropriate for me, those for whom it would be appropriate are probably now making a negative judgement about the business and saying, “If they can’t be bothered to check their literature, then why should I be bothered to place an order?” The poor quality of the brochure gives the wrong impression to prospective customers.

Expectation?

Is there an expectation in your industry sector for what you write to be accurate and error-free? For example, are you in the ‘professional’ sector? Are you Solicitors, Accountants, in the financial services sector, in the education sector etc? How much does your hard-earned reputation depend on this? Can you afford to get it wrong?

You probably do everything necessary to ensure that your products and services are delivered to the best of your ability, yet how much care do you take over all the various bits of written material that your business produces?

Many of us may take all this for granted as it is just something we do without thinking about it. But let’s think about it for a minute……..

Any piece of written material that you ‘publish’ by sending it to a customer or out into the public domain via a website or a blog, for example, is either promoting your business or it will reflect back on the quality of your business, without you even knowing it.

Did you know, in a recent survey, 59% of respondents said they would not do business with a company whose marketing material contained errors?

So, what do you do to make sure that your written content is accurate and error free? Do you rely totally on your auto-correct functions and a spellchecker? That’s fine, but did you realise that if a word is spelt correctly but you might have keyed it incorrectly, a spellchecker won’t pick it up? That could be embarrassing if you type ‘naked’ instead of ‘named’.

Reading and re-reading your own work is not only time consuming – time that you could be using to better effect – but you are more likely to miss those small errors because your eyes and brain recognise what you have written and will skim over it even though it could be wrong.

The brain is an incredible thing. If you’re reading something and you spot a mistake then your brain will automatically flip into a different mode and focus on finding the next mistake instead of the message contained within the writing. So, if you have got an important message to get across to your potential clients, you must make sure that it’s error-free otherwise you’ll lose the reader’s attention.

These are all classic examples of how a trained proofreader can help businesses to preserve and enhance reputations through the publication of professional-looking and error-free copy.

Give me a call if you think I could help you to protect and enhance your reputation.

When proofreading an article for a client recently, I suggested a number of changes which included inserting a hyphen in appropriate places where they had failed to insert them.

They then asked the question, “When should we use a hyphen?”

Well, first of all, we need to differentiate between a soft hyphen and a hard hyphen.

A soft hyphen is automatically inserted when you run out of space at the end of a line. When you come to edit your text and words move around then the hyphen will disappear.

A word of caution here – make sure you don’t end up with something like:

The-rapist

Mans-laughter

A hard hyphen, on the other hand, is inserted deliberately when you’re typing. It won’t disappear when you edit your work.

So, this question is all about using a hard hyphen.

When the words are being used as an adjective (i.e. they are describing something) then they should be hyphenated, e.g.

“You can choose from a range of on-board activities.” Here, on-board is describing the activities.

Otherwise, when the words are not describing anything, a hyphen should not be used, e.g.

“When you’re on board you’ll have a range of activities to choose from.”

A final word of caution, however. Don’t mistake a hyphen with a dash. A dash serves to split a sentence up, much like a comma. For starters, a hyphen is half the length of a dash, e.g.

“Your on-board (this is a hyphen) activities – (this is a dash) you can choose from a wide range of activities.”

You may well find that as you’re typing away your software will automatically up-grade your hyphen to a dash when you intend to split up a sentence. Check your Auto-Correct settings if you want this to happen.

If you find that writing in your business is a challenge, then see how my 7-step plan can help by reading my book Confident Business Writing.